The Politics of Educational Borrowing: Reopening the Case of Achimota in British Ghana Author(S): Gita Steiner‐Khamsi and Hubert O
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The Politics of Educational Borrowing: Reopening the Case of Achimota in British Ghana Author(s): Gita Steiner‐Khamsi and Hubert O. Quist Source: Comparative Education Review, Vol. 44, No. 3 (August 2000), pp. 272-299 Published by: The University of Chicago Press on behalf of the Comparative and International Education Society Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.1086/447615 . Accessed: 26/09/2013 08:40 Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at . http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp . JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected]. The University of Chicago Press and Comparative and International Education Society are collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Comparative Education Review. http://www.jstor.org This content downloaded from 146.141.14.231 on Thu, 26 Sep 2013 08:40:32 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions Name /C1334/C1334_CH02 07/20/00 06:52AM Plate # 0-Composite pg 272 # 1 The Politics of Educational Borrowing: Reopening the Case of Achimota in British Ghana GITA STEINER-KHAMSI AND HUBERT O. QUIST Scholars in comparative education frequently cite the case of Achimota as an early example of an educational transfer in which an American model— industrial education for African Americans—was transferred to the African continent.1 Achimota College, located north of Accra, the capital of the Gold Coast (colonial Ghana), was the first British educational institution in colo- nial Africa to implement the Hampton-Tuskegee model of industrial educa- tion. Borrowed specifically from the Hampton Institute in Virginia and the Tuskegee Institute in Alabama, this model provided industrial education for African Americans living in the racially segregated South. Upon transfer from the United States to Africa, the model was relabeled ‘‘adapted educa- tion,’’ and it was focused on agricultural and manual training of Africans. This particular educational concept for ‘‘blacks’’ and ‘‘natives’’ was heatedly debated both in the United States and in African countries. In colonial Af- rica, supporters of adapted education kept emphasizing the need to ‘‘adapt’’ the education of natives to their rural environment and tribal practices rather than to European urban and modern culture. In contrast, opponents pointed at the imbedded racism underlying the concept that advocated non- academic and segregated education for Africans. For critics, adapted educa- tion was the educational pillar of the colonial order that suffered from the assumption that the education of natives had to be ‘‘adapted’’ to the limited intellectual abilities and needs of Africans. Although Achimota first adopted this model of adapted education in the We would like to thank Philip Foster for his valuable and detailed comments on an earlier version of this article. Special thanks also to the students in the course ‘‘Postcolonial Studies of Education’’ at Teachers College, Columbia University, and in particular to Mignonette Chiu, who helped to advance the arguments of this article. We have also appreciated the careful comments by three anonymous reviewers of the Comparative Education Review. 1 See, e.g., Philip Foster, Education and Social Change in Ghana (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1965); Kenneth King, ‘‘James E. K. Aggrey: Collaborator, Nationalist, Pan-African,’’ Canadian Journal of African Studies 3, no. 3 (1969): 511–30; Edward H. Berman, ‘‘American Influence on African Education: The Role of the Phelps-Stokes Fund’s Education Commissions,’’ Comparative Education Review 15, no. 2 (1971): 132– 45, and ‘‘Tuskegee-in-Africa,’’ Journal of Negro Education 48, no. 2 (1972): 99–112; Udo Bude, ‘‘The Adaptation Concept in British Colonial Education,’’ Comparative Education Review 19, no. 3 (1983): 341–55; Bob White, ‘‘Talk about School: Education and the Colonial Project in French and British Africa, 1860–1960,’’ Comparative Education 32, no. 1 (1996): 9–25; Panayiotis Persianis, ‘‘The British Colonial Education ‘Lending’ Policy in Cyprus, 1878–1960: An Intriguing Example of an Elusive ‘Adapted Edu- cation’ Policy,’’ Comparative Education 32, no. 1 (1996): 45– 68. Comparative Education Review, vol. 44, no. 3. ᭧ 2000 by the Comparative and International Education Society. All rights reserved. 0010-4086/2000/4403-0002$02.00 272 August 2000 This content downloaded from 146.141.14.231 on Thu, 26 Sep 2013 08:40:32 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions Name /C1334/C1334_CH02 07/20/00 06:52AM Plate # 0-Composite pg 273 # 2 THE POLITICS OF EDUCATIONAL BORROWING Gold Coast, the model was soon to have an even greater impact for the entire African continent. In 1925, this adapted education model became the ideo- logical centerpiece of the British colonial White Paper entitled ‘‘Education Policy in British Tropical Africa.’’ 2 In other words, an American concept of education—industrial education for blacks in the segregated South—was borrowed for the education of Africans in British colonies. British colonial officers were not passive recipients or borrowers of an educational model that existed elsewhere, nor was it coincidental that they selected an Ameri- can model for their colonies. The British policy of borrowing complemented active lending policies from the United States, particularly those of the Phelps-Stokes Fund, a New York-based philanthropic society whose mission it was to promote the education of natives and blacks both in the United States and abroad. Throughout the 1920s, the Phelps-Stokes Fund was in- strumental in diffusing the American model of industrial education on the African continent. Convinced that what was good for African Americans must be a blessing for Africans, Jesse Thomas Jones, chairman of the Phelps- Stokes African Education Commission, wrote: ‘‘though village conditions in Africa differ in many respects from those in America where these activities [of Hampton and Tuskegee] had great influence on the improvement of rural life, the resemblances are sufficiently numerous and real to warrant the belief that the plans above described may be adapted to colonial conditions in Africa.’’ 3 Released in 1925, ‘‘Education Policy in British Tropical Africa,’’ the new authoritative document for British colonial education, was almost an exact replica of the Phelps-Stokes report of 1922.4 In line with the recom- mendations of the Phelps-Stokes African Education Commission, this White 2 Advisory Committee on Native Education in the British Tropical African Dependencies, Education Policy in British Tropical Africa (London: His Majesty’s Stationery Office, 1925). 3 Jesse Thomas Jones, Education in Africa: A Study of West, South and Equatorial Africa by the African Education Commission (New York: Phelps-Stokes Fund, 1922), p. 141. 4 The similarities between the two reports have been noted by other authors; Philip Foster (p. 156) notes the following: ‘‘So completely were the principles underlying the Phelps-Stokes report accepted by the British colonial authorities that the policy statement of the Advisory Committee paralleled in large degree the conclusions of the American organization.’’ Edward H. Berman (‘‘Christian Missions in Af- rica,’’ in African Reactions to Missionary Educations, ed. Edward H. Berman [New York: Teachers College Press, 1975], pp. 1–53, quote on p. 17) comments on the White Paper (‘‘Education Policy in British Tropical Africa’’) issued in 1925: ‘‘To a large extent, this White Paper represented a reworking of the earlier Phelps-Stokes Fund’s reports. These reports, in turn, had been greatly influenced by the Hampton- Tuskegee philosophy of education.’’ Finally, William E. F. Ward, author of the official report, which was funded by the Nuffield Foundation and the Colonial Office, acknowledged that the British colonial gov- ernment was influenced by Phelps-Stokes; see William E. F. Ward, African Education: A Study of Educational Policy and Practice in British Tropical Africa (Oxford: Oxford University Press, produced for the Nuffield Foundation and the Colonial Office, 1953). Ward states: ‘‘In accepting and interpreting their responsi- bility for education, Colonial Governments were powerfully influenced by the two reports of the commis- sion which the Phelps-Stokes sent to West Africa in 1920–21 and East and Central Africa in 1924. By that time, African exports were beginning to bring in some revenue, and under stimulus of this new though modest prosperity and of the Phelps-Stokes reports, the Governments of the Gold Coast and of Uganda established Achimota and Makerere colleges’’ (Ward, pp. 2–3). Comparative Education Review 273 This content downloaded from 146.141.14.231 on Thu, 26 Sep 2013 08:40:32 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions Name /C1334/C1334_CH02 07/20/00 06:52AM Plate # 0-Composite pg 274 # 3 STEINER-KHAMSI AND QUIST Paper subscribed to adapted education, stating that ‘‘education should be adapted to the mentality, aptitudes, occupations and traditions of the various peoples.’’ 5 The Hampton Institute (Virginia) and the Tuskegee Institute (Alabama) used to be for African Americans in the southern states of the United States what Achimota College (Gold Coast) now became for Africans in Africa and other colonized peoples under British rule—monuments of adapted education that educated their students to accommodate to the lim- ited opportunities of a racist environment. Students learned that they could only improve their social realities as blacks if they gradually worked their way up, cooperated with enlightened whites, and provided proof that they were deserving of being treated with dignity.6 The educational philosophy of these three monuments of adapted education were firmly rooted in the belief that blacks should be trained for a life of manual labor and should stay away from studies that were too ‘‘bookish’’ and academic.